R先生肖像

In April 1877 the third Impressionist exhibition opened in rented rooms on the rue Le Peletier in Paris. Caillebotte had found the space, hung the pictures and paid a large share of the cost, and he showed Paris Street, Rainy Day there himself. He was 29, living on the fortune his father had left him, and the group's patron as much as one of its painters.

This portrait is signed and dated the same year. The sitter is thought to be Antoine Patrice Reyre, a businessman who seems to have come into Caillebotte's circle around those exhibitions. The blue and white sofa he sits on appears in the inventory of the Caillebotte family house, so the picture was almost certainly painted at home rather than in a studio.

It turns up again the following year, hanging on the wall behind Reyre's mother in a portrait Caillebotte made of her. The painting is still in private hands.